From Silos to Strategy: How France Travail Powers its Infrastructure

When governments manage data well, the impact reaches far beyond their own walls by helping public organization stakeholders and citizens. For example, accurate statistics drive policy decisions, trusted KPIs support accountability, and transparent, citizen-facing services shape how people interact with government institutions.

That’s why France Travail, France’s national employment agency, undertook one of the most ambitious data transformations in the public sector. Its impressive results earned recognition as a Constellation Research SuperNova Awards™ finalist in the Data to Decisions category for 2025.

The agency’s story is about more than modernizing IT. It’s about how strong data governance and data discovery became mission-critical to building public trust, delivering reliable services, and powering an infrastructure that affects millions of lives. The success story also holds important lessons for private-sector leaders looking to unlock similar value from their data.

The High Stakes of Public Data

France Travail supports more than five million job seekers and approximately 60,000 employees across every region of France. It connects job seekers with employers and training providers through AI-powered services, statistical analysis, and digital innovation platforms.

In addition, France Travail offers tailored support to individuals through financial aid, professional development, and training. The organization also provides employment statistics and offers other mission-critical services that influence national economic policy.

The challenge was that the organization’s work was constrained by fragmented knowledge, IT-owned documentation, and a lack of organization-wide data literacy. These issues severely impacted AI teams that were developing sensitive algorithmic solutions and also affected lead teams producing critical employment statistics.

The risks were not at an abstract level. Flawed or inaccessible data can slow down critical projects, compromise trust in employment statistics, and affect citizens who rely on accurate information for their livelihoods.

Embedding Governance and Discovery at the Foundational Level

To break through data silos, France Travail optimized the Actian Data Intelligence Platform as its enterprise-scale governance and data discovery solution. The goal wasn’t simply to centralize information, but to create a culture of data confidence and usage across a highly distributed workforce.

France Travail took an approach that included:

• Unified data discovery. Making 20,000 datasets with 30,000 glossary definitions, along with 500 business data concepts, cataloged and accessible across 30 connected platforms. This ensured every team could find the right information quickly.
• Governance by design. Embedding data lineage, documentation, and compliance tracking into workflows so every algorithm, statistic, and report is built on accountable, auditable data.
• Human-centered adoption. Using internal demos, continuous promotion, and local ambassadors to build momentum and ensure employees understand how to use the Actian platform effectively.

This combination of flexible, easy-to-use technology and a detailed strategy allowed data scientists, policy leaders, and business teams to make decisions with confidence.

Delivering Measurable Outcomes

With the Actian Data Intelligence Platform in place, France Travail experienced transformative results. Tangible outcomes included:

• 60,000 potential users with 1,000 active weekly users engage in data discovery.
• 77% satisfaction across departments and regions, from technical teams to government advisors.
• 500 business concepts catalogued to establish a common language for employment reporting.
• AI teams are empowered to develop sensitive algorithms responsibly, while lead teams produce accurate, transparent KPIs for national statistics.

One France Travail management control department user summed up the impact by saying, “The application is intuitive and speeds up daily tasks significantly.” That intuitive experience proved to be critical in overcoming employee resistance, helping staff leverage the platform and ensure it wasn’t just adopted but also embraced by teams.

Why Governance Builds Public Trust

At the heart of this transformation is a principle that resonates in both the public and private sectors, which is that building trust in data is non-negotiable. When an organization reports national unemployment rates, manages financial aid, or launches AI-powered matching services, the credibility of those efforts depends on the integrity of the underlying data.

By embedding governance into the fabric of its operations, France Travail ensures that every dataset fueling a decision is complete, accurate, and compliant with strict governmental standards. The outcome isn’t only faster reporting or more efficient projects, but also instills confidence among citizens, employees, and policymakers.

What Businesses can Learn From France Travail

While France Travail’s scale and mission are unique, its data journey offers lessons that apply broadly. Organizations in any sector can follow a similar approach to:

• Democratize data access responsibly. France Travail turned 60,000 potential users into empowered data explorers by balancing accessibility with strict compliance controls. Enterprises can do the same, ensuring that data decentralization doesn’t come at the expense of oversight.
• Drive adoption with intention. Technology alone isn’t enough to reach data goals. Internal demos, ambassador networks, and a focus on literacy helped France Travail embed data use into daily workflows. Other organizations can replicate this approach.
• Make platforms intuitive. From data scientists to advisors, platform satisfaction improved because the Actian solution is easy to use. In business contexts, usability often determines whether a governance initiative succeeds or stalls.
• Connect governance to outcomes. By linking trusted data to mission-critical KPIs, France Travail showed how governance isn’t a check-the-box exercise but instead a foundation for meaningful impact.

A Blueprint for Modernization

France Travail’s recognition as a 2025 Constellation Research SuperNova Award finalist (the winner will be announced in October 2025) underscores the importance of data intelligence in the modern era. Governments around the world face similar challenges of scale, compliance, and citizen trust. Businesses face parallel pressures to drive innovation while ensuring accountability.

The common thread is clear that organizations can no longer treat data governance and discovery as back-office functions. They must be viewed as strategic imperatives that determine whether AI initiatives succeed, KPIs can be trusted, and services meet the expectations of the people they serve.

France Travail’s transformation shows that when silos give way to strategy, data becomes more than an asset. It becomes part of an infrastructure that’s capable of powering both economic policy and everyday experiences. It’s a lesson that every organization, public or private, can put into practice.

About Actian Corporation

Actian empowers enterprises to confidently manage and govern data at scale. Actian data intelligence solutions help streamline complex data environments and accelerate the delivery of AI-ready data. Designed to be flexible, Actian solutions integrate seamlessly and perform reliably across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. Learn more about Actian, the data division of HCLSoftware, at actian.com.